Students in April-May 2024 have been protesting Israel’s efforts in the Gaza war not because their opinions have merit, or even because they know & understand any basic facts about the issues, or because they basically don’t like Jews. They’re protesting because of a trend we’ve all been observing of teens for many decades, especially these last couple of decades . . .

They want to be liked.

Seriously. This is just a fad, and they do it so they’ll be liked by their peers and won’t have FOMO. In this age of the internet & specifically social media, people are connected in an Orwellian manner. Everybody knows what everybody else is doing, and the popular people have more followers and more “likes” on their posts. It’s like they never left high school. The y join these groups simply to fit in & be liked.

The protests mean nothing other than to the students’ narcissism. This too shall pass.

College students support ideas simply because they’re popular and only do surface investigation of the reasons why they should. They are obsessed with being liked & having no stress or opposition to their ideas & demands. Their helicopter parents didn’t equip them with the emotional tools needed to survive in a dog-eat-dog world, yet told them they’re always right and the world belongs to them. They stress far more importance in B.S.-ing each other rather than discussing issues or even having an opposing point of view as that will make them appear to be troublemakers who don’t kowtow to the mainstream groupthink. Being a Gen-Z-er is like being part of a religious cult where you drink the Kool-Aid every day & pretend it doesn’t taste bad.

These same students supported the Palestinians (specifically their political/terrorist group Hamas) when they invaded Israel & killed over 1,000 Israeli non-military civilians, along with countless rapes, plus kidnapping of at least 240 people, and thievery & destruction of property. Palestinians supporters say this is justified retribution for alleged Israeli wrongs now & in the past. Here’s what these supporters don’t know and/or don’t care about . . .

The Israelis were always willing to share the land; it was the Palestinians who didn’t and still don’t want peace, which is why they have to be occupied to hold them down & to keep their Arab neighbors from taking them over again & putting them closer to invading Israel again. The Palestinians didn’t argue for 20 years while the neighboring Arab countries invaded & took them over from 1948-1967 and used their land to start the 1967 Six-Day war. Their motto “From the river to the sea” means to take back & own everything between the Jordan River & the Mediterranean, i.e., all of Israel & Palestine, and to kill or otherwise deport all the Jews thereafter. Another holocaust.

Palestinians are virulent barbarians who try to destroy & overturn everything wherever they go. They’ve been run out of so many countries that even their Arab neighbors don’t want them. They can’t self-govern because of their own nature; they can’t do the right thing always and they constantly fight among themselves, not mention their disdain for basic womens’ rights or freedom of religion & freedom from religion. True, there are Palestinian refugees in Arab states, but nothing like the amount that would be there otherwise, just like the overwhelming amount of Hispanics who would love to enter the USA vs the 40 million who are already here. Unlike the Palestinians, Hispanics in the USA are mostly a peaceful group, though they do have some bad seeds within our borders, but the good ones support America and are happy to be here. By contrast, all Palestinians wish death upon any country that stands in their way, especially if they’re not Muslims. This is racism in the guise of religion.

Israel occupies Palestine because they have to in order to contain them from causing trouble in Israel and worldwide & to protect Israel’s borders. Look at all the carnage the PLO & Hamas & its Muslim brothers have brought to the world just in the last 50 years — the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, the 1985 Achille Lauro ship hijacking, the 1982 Beirut barracks bombing, the 1986 Lockerbie plane bombing, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998 USS Cole attack & the African embassy bombings that year, the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the 2002 Bali bombings, the 2004 Madrid train bombings, the 2006 Mumbai train bombings & more in Mumbai 2 year laters, the 2010 Pakistani mosque massacre, the 2013 Kenya mall massacre, the June 2014 massacres of appx 2,000 Shia Muslims in Iraq, the 2016 truck attack in France, dozens of attacks in Pakistan & Afghanistan between 2017-2019, The 2018 massacres in Syria, the 2019 Easter bombings in Sri Lanka, the 2021 airport attack in Afghanistan, and now the Oct 7, 2023 attack on Israeli citizens. Yes, these weren’t all Palestinian-led attacks, but they were either attacks on behalf on Palestine or by their supporters against non-Muslim people/nations. There are way more incidents than these — over the last 42 years, there have been over 48,000 Islamic terrorist attacks worldwide.

The Israelis warned our government for decades prior to 9/11 that we should be harsh on Arabs using our airlines and use strenuous measures to vet all Arabs who board our planes as they said USA airlines were an easy mark for hijackings, and 9/11 proved that. The Israelis told us decades earlier that we should be placing armed marshals on all flights, to arm the cockpit, to deny the carrying on of any items that could be reasonably used as weapons like scissors & box cutters, and to install breakproof cockpit doors that are not allowed to be opened when anyone is on the plane, all of which fell upon deaf ears at the goverment & airline level.

Like a lot of white people who are sports fans, I wanted OJ Simpson to be innocent. I wanted to believe that the police framed him, that drug dealers did it, that someone else did it, but the fact is that only OJ could have done it. Look at the possible scenarios and why they aren’t plausible:

1) The cops framed OJ — To do that, they theory is that they got OJ’s, Nicole’s & Ron’s blood from the crime scene & preserved it using EDTA & then put their blood on OJ’s sock, the 2 gloves, his bedroom, the Ford Bronco, the Bundy crime scene, among other places. But they didn’t have samples of Nicole’s & Ron’s blood, so how did their blood get into OJ’s vehicle, sock & gloves? Detective Tom Lange has stated in various interviews that the cops weren’t sure if OJ was a 3rd victim or not when they arrived at Rockingham & entered his house cautiously looking for bodies of him and his live-in housekeeper after they were let in by SImpson’s daughter who was sleeping in a bungalow behind the house when the cops arrived. They weren’t sure when OJ left town and initially assumed he was out of town when the crime occurred. For the reason that the cops weren’t sure if OJ did it or not at that point, I don’t believe they planted evidence. I’ve read about the Rampart Scandal from 2000 & I don’t see a correlation here as those Rampart cops were motivated by money, not justice, as the latter would be the case if they were trying to frame OJ because they thought he was guilty.

2) Drug dealers — Crimes by these guys aren’t particularly thought out & complex. They typically just kill people very simply and move on. They don’t frame others for it. They don’t expect to be caught and have no fear of it. Many of them prefer you know it was them to plant fear into the minds of their enemies, and their friends. The idea that a drug dealer would kill someone & then frame a 3rd party is highly implausible based on the history of tens of thousands of drug murders that haven’t including framing another person and that, to this date, I can’t find any evidence of a drug murderer framing someone or even attempting it.

3) Someone else killed Nicole & Ron — Theories include OJ’s son, a friend, a serial killer, mobsters, someone hired by OJ, etc, but if you add up the circumstances that virtually all people agree with & match up the facts we know, those scenarios aren’t plausible. If someone other than OJ did it, why isn’t their blood anywhere and everywhere? And how or why would these other killers get OJ’s blood at the crime scene and other places when he’s allegedly not there or doesn’t want you to know he’s been there?

4) Programmed — Conspiracy theorists screw up the real conspiracies by seeing conspiracies everywhere. Most experts on the JFK assassination are convinced it was a conspiracy, and I am reasonably certain that a conspiracy existed for over 30 years now based on what I’ve read, and I’ve read many books on it & watched many documentaries & interviews on it. But I don’t fall for other conspiracies simply because I believe in 1 possible conspiracy. The world is not flat, we did indeed put men on the moon, and OJ was not part of a programmed mind-control experiment. The CIA’s efforts at mind-control & brainwashing pale in comparison to what religion has done to the world’s minds, which means they never had any luck with it, nor found any drugs that were effective and left a person able to do anything while under the influence of it. Religion has proved the best way to control hearts & minds is to convince someone to do something they wouldn’t normally do by simply presenting them an alternate reality & convincing them to believe it, like there’s a old white man in the sky who created all we see & created us, with other related fables that are counter to known scientific facts, then ask them to do it in the name of religion or to save themselves and society.

Virtually all white people knew he was guilty, and I believe a heavy majority of black people knew as well, but the mostly black jury (9 out of 12) acquitted him not because they thought he was innocent or that the state hadn’t proved their case, but to smack down the LAPD and strike a blow for black people who were ever intimidated, beaten, framed or coerced by the LAPD or cops everywhere. The OJ case turned into a race war, and on that day, the blacks won and the justice system lost.

OJ did get a decent amount of punishment; he didn’t get away scot-free by any means. For starters, his reputation was forever destroyed and he became a sideshow freak. He lost all his assets (at least $133,000) and his house on Rockingham. He spent 15 months in county jail during the trial and then spent 9 years in a Nevada prison, which happened due to trying to recover his allegedly-stolen assets to essentially keep the Goldmans from getting them if it could be proven the assets were indeed his, so in a way, the 9 years was due to the double murder case, and considering the fate of virtually everyone else involved in that case, Simpson got sentenced like a murderer would. We’re talking about armed robbery & unlawful detainment and he got 33 years for that, which should have been more like 10 to 15 tops. That was payback, as many murderers & rapists get less time than that usually.

My next question is why hasn’t the Pro Football Hall of Fame kicked him out? If they didn’t want to induct Bob Hayes for 30 years due to what he did after his football career ended, then what you do after your career ends apparently matters in some cases, but not OJ’s, and that’s an unfair double standard.

Let me preface this article by saying that being a Southerner, I can identify with Shane Gillis and I certainly get & appreciate his humor on some level. I also love dark humor, so almost nothing shocks me. Shane doesn’t even touch the surface of shock value in my opinion, and wouldn’t unless you’re a person who’s spent a lifetime getting participation trophies, looking for safe spaces & making ridiculous woke remarks about things you know nothing about.

I’ve watched 3 fairly-short videos of him, maybe 5 to 8 minutes each, and I watched the February 2024 SNL monologue thereafter. My initial impression of him still stands up after having watched all 4 videos, and I’m giving an objective opinion since I’m not a big fan of his, nor am I one of the woke people who disliked him before even watching him:

A) His style is a lack of style, and it’s working for him. He comes across as somebody who’s not a polished comedian or even has any experience at being on stage, like one of the veterans of amateur night in a southern small-town comedy club right before the strippers come onstage. Seems that a lot of people like that persona, and though I’m not one of those people, it makes him likeable to people who don’t like the typical standup comedian. He’s like a grunge comedian in a room full of hair metal comedians. You’d have to be about 50 to get that reference. I would like him more if he gets a little more polished. I don’t mind the act; he just seems too raw/amateurish in his delivery & mannerisms. He needs more confidence in his delivery & his act in general.

B) I have no problem with any of his material. He can say retard, cracker, gay, whatever, doesn’t rattle me one bit; in fact, I’d like to see him go darker on his material and really embrace being what he is, a straight-shooting southerner who embraces dark humor, as that’s a niche (instead of being like all the other comedians) & he’s successful doing it. The comedians who have ever been super-successful had a niche that no one else was doing. He’s like a darker (and smarter) Larry The Cable Guy. Yes, I know Larry is a fake persona for Dan Whitney & I’ve seen Dan’s standup before he became Larry & it was meh at best. He figured out that being Dan was getting him nowhere, and I’m hoping Shane will turn it up to 10 and be full-on Shane Gillis with no filtering ever.

C) If you don’t like his act, don’t watch it, but don’t try and shut him down & screw it up for those who want to watch it. Besides that, he’s not hurting anybody with his words, and the man has to make a living, and there’s plenty of people who want him to do his act just like it is with no filtering.

D) The quality of his material isn’t real good, but that will get better as he goes along, especially if he doesn’t let the woke comments get to him & he ramps it up. What I’m worried about is Shane becoming the next Andrew Dice Clay & getting run out of business by the woke crowd & letting it get to him like it did the Diceman.

So my thoughts are that he’s about a 6 out of 10, but has a lot of room to grow & get better & he should given time, and the woke crowd can kiss his ass if they don’t like his material. There’s enough people that do like him to keep him onstage indefinitely, and I’ll check back with him at some point in the future myself.

There is no perennial “good country”. All countries have the abilty to be rogue states if the wrong ruler comes to power aided by a political/social shift in the population.

Germany is a good country now, but they spend decades in a warlike posture & had a dictator who destroyed millions of lives that Germans blindly followed out of social fear. That same scenario is playing out right now in America.

America could easily be much like any dictatorship (read: 1940s Germany with Hitler in charge) if the wrong person comes to power. Trump is that person, and the fact that he didn’t take us over the brink in his 1st term isn’t proof that he’s a sane leader as he was simply working on his power base those 4 years & got blindsided by a little bug from China. There are others in the GOP who could be as bad as Trump if not worse.

Trump started by putting 3 justices on the Supreme Court to do his bidding, and was working on his rise when Covid hit & upended his reign. When Covid made it easier to vote, the Left turned out to vote & delivered states no one saw coming like GA & AZ. He then worked to overturn the 2020 election, and he’s been working on getting his people in positions to override the 2024 election if needed, mainly by getting his hand-picked candidates into the Secretary of State positions in battleground states. The SOS is leader of the state elections and can change the outcome if they’re nefarious enough.

Case in point — the 2000 election in Florida. 12,000 minorities were struck from the voter lists without cause leading up the election, and they didn’t find out until they tried to cast their vote. Palm Beach County employed a “butterfly” ballot that was confusing and caused a lot of mistaken votes for the wrong candidate. Bush won FL by 537 votes, but note that Pat Buchanan received 2,000 votes in Palm Beach County, a heavily Democratic county where he should’ve received closer to 200 votes, if that. Those 1,800 votes would’ve made Gore the winner. What about the 12,000 mostly minority voters who would’ve surely voted for Gore who were not allowed to vote in error? Republicans were in charge of the voter purge & the butterfly ballot. Look it up.

I don’t have a big problem with the normal Republican viewpoint. I’m fully against lifting limitations on immigration, against welfare, against public schools (as they’re currently run at least), business limitations & Federal agency rules the Dems install, Covid lockdowns, masks, and at least half of the Dems POV. But the GOP needs to elect leaders who will act sane & work with the other side of the aisle & create compromises. Saying it’s my way or the highway is not a good political stance. We have tens of millions of people on both sides of the aisle, and we have to work together, get along & make compromises that we can live with. The 2008 election is a good example when John McCain said that Barack Obama was not a Muslim & not a bad man — he just had some political differences with him. That was a smart GOP politician, and all pols on both sides should learn from his example.

Paul McCartney is a global superstar because he was a Beatle & his work while with them, but his solo career was bad for at least his 1st 4 albums. Without The Beatles, we may never have heard of him, like the great 2019 movie “Yesterday”. In fact, none of his solo albums are any good beyond the singles as most of his deep cuts are not “A” or even “B” material, and if he hadn’t been a Beatle, he probably would’ve went nowhere by 1972 & he wouldn’t have had the chance to record & release the latter-day hit singles. He’d have been a 1-hit wonder by what would have been his 3rd & final album, if you can imagine that (Lennon pun intended), assuming he’d gotten the chance to even record the 2nd & 3rd albums.

I love Paul’s solo singles work & it includes almost 40 hit USA singles, but without a Beatle history, those albums would’ve been forgotten history & have sold next to nothing. The critics pounded all his albums back then & still do 50 years later & correctly so. He sold albums only because he was a Beatle. All of Paul’s 1st 4 albums before Band On The Run were either gold or multi-platinum albums in the USA (usually hitting #1 or #2, all except the 3rd album). The 1st album hit #1 in the USA for 3 weeks & went double platinum, and the 2nd hit #2 USA & went platinum. The original version of “Maybe I’m Amazed” on album #1 wasn’t released, but it’s a good song as the live version hit the top 10 in 1977.

Chalk all these sales up to being a Beatle as they weren’t good albums and he only had 1 USA hit single in 4 albums (“Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” from the 2nd album). The 3rd & 4th albums were indeed slight commercial disappointments that “only” went gold, but the 3rd album hit #10 & the 4th album hit #1 in the USA, and any band would give anything to hit the top 10 & go gold. But there’s nothing on these albums that supports these results other than being a Beatle.

It’s possible that the record company may not have made much money on those last 2 albums considering what their cost may have been & what they may have paid him, and might have considering moving on from him, but he would’ve simply self-financed if no one else had picked up the 5th album’s material. Without the Beatle money & fame, he wouldn’t have been able to do that. He’s sold 90 million albums post-Beatles & had 38 singles in the Top 40, so his career sales may be beyond criticism, but let’s face it – his solo career happened simply because he was a Beatle.

He did manage to write a lot of hits after it took off, unlike the other Beatles who had a smattering of solo hits comparatively, but we may have never heard of him otherwise if he hadn’t been a Beatle. You could probably say the same for John & Ringo, but George wrote a few hits in his early solo years that would’ve sustained him through the decades, and keep in mind that he had no help with his Beatles songs, so those songs would’ve been his solo songs. You could probably say the same about Paul & John, but we don’t know how much influence each one had in the writing of each song other than what Paul’s telling us, and George Martin had a big hand in their success that may not have happened otherwise.

Over the past decade, there have been numerous allegations of rape, sexual assault & sexual harassment made by women who in many cases waited years & many decades to make their claims, some of them simply asking for money, and some going so far as to file criminal charges to help extract that money civilly.

This has got to stop now. Claims of rape, sexual assault & sexual harassment should require the same burden of proof as any other crime, and it should be even more scrutinized than most other crimes, with the evidence being on par with that required for murder charges, the latter of which in many cases also moves forward with little proof other than usually faulty eyewitness testimony.

A claim & charge of rape should only be allowed if the accuser comes forward right away and a rape kit is performed to gather evidence. Using simply the testimony of the accuser(s) as the only evidence is essentially a conflict of interest. It’s common for people to come out of the woodwork and file claims decades later against a person who has an initial claim against them in hopes of getting notoriety, pity & a payoff. Using that standard of evidence, you could convict anybody of virtually anything with enough people making the same claim of guilt & no other evidence.

Keep in mind that if a person is truly guilty of a crime against you, when you fail to report it & press charges, you leave them free to commit the same crime against someone else. You are materially responsible for subsequent crimes by that person, and by extension, should be civilly responsible for damage claims by future victims.

What about people who have been accused, but either never charged, or never convicted of the charges? Those people have their lives ruined even though they’ve never been found guilty of anything. You can & will believe what you want to believe, but as of December 2023, neither Bill Cosby nor Kevin Spacey are legally guilty of any crimes. Cosby’s conviction was overturned due to a retracted grant of immunity, who then had his testimony twisted around in court & in the media to portray him as saying something he never said, and the authorities simply never had a good case against Spacey. Actor Danny Masterson of That 70’s Show also was recently convicted without any evidence other than the accuser(s) testimony, which came 2 decades after the incidents allegedly happened.

Furthermore, it should be illegal to publicize claims against someone before they have been charged with a crime, and I believe that protection should extend until they are convicted, as a non-guilty verdict doesn’t translate into a non-guilty verdict in the court of popular opinion.

GOP-ers are up in arms (again) over Colorado bouncing Trump off the ballot there. Colorado had every right to do it as Trump is definitely guilty of insurrection.

It’s not the symbolic gesture they’re mad about; it’s because this action could move either Red states or Swing states to do the same. Colorado has been a Dem stronghold the last 4 elections. Trump lost it 41% to 55% against Biden in 2020. On or off the ballot, he still loses Colorado.

On Jan 6, 2021, he failed to do his duty to defend the Constitution, which is what he swore to do. Congress is an extension of the Constitution as they are Constitutional officers, so to speak. By failing to defend Congress from the anarchist mob, he failed to defend the Constitution. 

Despite the myths surrounding Trump’s actions & reactions for Jan 6, the one thing we know for sure is that he did not call in the National Guard or anyone else to defend the Capital from the rioters. In fact, he encouraged them.

Just 3 minutes into his speech, he used the lie that the election was stolen to incite the riot, a claim that was never proven in any court anywhere. He told a lie to start the riots that stormed the Capitol. That’s insurrection.

He also said “If we don’t FIGHT LIKE HELL, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” He’s encouraging people to fight. He also said “WE are going to Capitol.” This is the move that started the riot.

Trump is guilty of insurrection and it’s all because he wants power so much and wants to win at all costs that he will create & promulagate lies to achive victory. Many notorious dictators in history have done the same. He’s even said he wants to be a dictator, even if for a day.

Forget about Jan 6 & everything he’s been charged with when looking at his character. He has so many other reasons why he shouldn’t be president that are completely overlooked by the GOP. Obnoxious, shady businessman, the many financial questions surrounding his true net worth, mocking a disabled person, the vulgar language he’s been recorded using while advocating the use of sexual assault against women, the shady university dealings, the thrice-married adulturer, his cozy relationship with Putin — this man’s character is the lowest of the low.

Before I go on-point, I’ve said this many times before — the RRHOF should be changed to the “Music Hall Of Fame”, as it’s ridiculous to let in artists who aren’t Rock & leave out those who are the epitome of great Rock when your name is the Rock & Roll Hame Of Fame.  Tupac Shakur has no business being in a Hall Of Fame for Rock & Roll, but there are a ton of other artists in there who contradict that term also.

But today’s complaint is about the real tragedy of the RRHOF — the incredible snubs/omissions they have made purely for personal or socio-political reasons, or because they don’t really know diddily-squat about the acts they induct or possibly music in general.

I’m not talking about the excluded ACTS — my complaint today is the excluded BANDMEMBERS they arbitrarily excluded when they inducted certain bands. I have a long list of those omissions, and the RRHOF needs to come clean and go back and induct those omitted persons and give them the same fanfare the inducted personnel got when they were inducted.

In 2016, they inducted ELO — Electric Light Orchestra, known for its “light orchestra” — It’s in the friggin’ name, fer chrissakes! Yet the RRHOF omitted the entire “Light Orchestra” section of the band: Mik Kaminski, Melvyn Gale, Hugh McDowell, AND its conductor Louis Clark from the induction, not to mention other string players who were on the hits at various times. They inducted Roy Wood simply because he founded the band & its idea & played on the 1st album, but he didn’t do anything much with it, and certainly didn’t play on the successful albums/hits they made. And omitting bassist Kelly Groucutt was a cold slap in the face at the very least. I believe this happened mainly because Kelly, Mik & Louis were members of ELO 2, which Jeff hasn’t forgiven them for even though Kelly died in 2009, and because they weren’t origianl members, but that alone has not been a concrete rule if you look at the history of inductions. Timothy B. Schmit, Joe Walsh & Don Felder were not original members of Easgles, but were inducted. Plenty of other examples as well.

I don’t know how the decisions are made as to which personnel gets to be inducted, specifically if the band has any input in this or not, but it certainly seems that Jeff Lynne had input, because he had a long spat with Bev, Mik, Louis & Kelly for doing ELO II/The Orchestra, which they created & were a part of.  When Jeff called it quits in 1986, other members of the band didn’t want to quit. Bev, Mik, Kelly & Louis wanted to continue playing & needed to make a living, and yet Jeff had all the money he needed from writing & publishing royalties & a career writing & publishing & producing other acts, and he didn’t want them to use the name, which severely limited their chances of making good money even though Bev Bevan owned half of the name. So they decided to rename the band “ELO II” so people would know this was most of ELO, but not all of it, and not Jeff. Jeff couldn’t do much since Bev owned half the name, but once Bev quit ELO II, Jeff bought out Bev’s interest in the name & the band was forced to change the name to “The Orchestra”, and their money & ticket sales went down tremendously.

The original ELO band would’ve been defunct in 1972 when Roy quit if Jeff didn’t keep it going, and Jeff wrote & sang all the hits we know today, so I get it that he’s the man, but the hits didn’t start coming on strong until Mik & Kelly & Louis came onboard for the 4th album, and Kelly came onboard shortly thereafter for the tour to support it as the original bassist quit at the beginning of that album’s recording. In fact, ELO had only 1 USA Top 40 hit prior to this lineup change, then had 19 more after it. Kelly played on every hit after that album, including Evil Woman, Strange Magic, Livin’ Thing, Do Ya, Telephone Line, Turn To Stone, Mr. Blue Sky, Sweet Talkin’ Woman, Shine A Little Love, Don’t Bring Me Down, Last Train To London, Confusion, Xanadu, All Over The World, Hold On Tight, and Calling America, along with a few other minor hits & on all the albums between 1975 & 1986, which was the most successful period ELO had.

Now let’s talk about Pearl Jam — the RRHOF allowed someone who’s a vital part of the band to be omitted.  Dave Abbruzzese played on the 2nd & 3rd albums, “Vs” & “Vitalogy”, yet wasn’t included because of a disagreement he had with the band over 20 years earlier, and they also omitted drummer Jack Irons who played on the 4th & 5th albums, “No Code” & “Yield”.  Instead, they inducted latecomer Matt Cameron who didn’t join until 1998 & didn’t play on a recording with them until 2000 when they had become relics & had literally nothing to do with the band’s hit recordings when they were relevant in the 90’s.

For anyone who thinks Matt Cameron should be included with Pearl Jam, note that the RRHOF typically ALWAYS excludes members who weren’t in the classic or first-popular lineup (note that I didn’t say “most-popular”).  Case in point . . .

The band Chicago was super-popular in the 80’s as well as the 70’s & sold a ton of albums in each decade — in fact, they sold 17 million albums in the USA of their 70’s output & 17 million albums in the USA of their 80’s & later output, yet the 2 integral members of the group’s 80’s & beyond lineup, Jason Scheff & Bill Champlin, weren’t inducted with the group.  Neither was their long-time 70’s percussionist Laudir DeOliveira who was with them from 1973 to 1981. This is a tremendous oversight & just shows you that they don’t use facts & figures — they use their short-sighted opinions & emotions to determine who gets in, and a hefty dose of socio/business politics as well.

It doesn’t end here, not by far . . .

Remember Bob Welch? He had hits in the late 70’s including “Ebony Eyes”, “Sentimental Lady”, “Hot Love, Cold World”, and “Precious Love”. He’s largely forgotten now in the annals of Pop history, and even killed himself in 2012 after suffering in poor health & soured finances, and the RRHOF had a large part in his legacy being forgotten . . .

Welch was initially a member of Fleetwood Mac for a period of time in the early 70’s after their Blues-based sound ran its course when Peter Green left, and before they became Pop superstars when Lindsey Buckingham & Stevie Nicks joined. He bridged the gap between these 2 phases and helped ease them from Blues to Pop. When guitarist Danny Kerwin quit the band, Bob was the only guitarist left.

He talked the band into leaving England & relocating in his hometown of L.A. to be closer to the USA recording industry. He wrote a number of good songs, including “Sentimental Lady”, which he wrote & first sang/recorded on a Fleetwood Mac album in 1972, and is a large part of why Christine McVie sang the backup again on his hit rerecording of it. Mick Fleetwood himself said in his own autobiography that if it weren’t for Bob Welch being the glue that kept the band together & getting them to L.A., the band would’ve simply disappeared & been a 60’s Blues-band relic that couldn’t make it in Pop and would be largely forgotten — like Welch today.

Keep in mind that it was in L.A. when, after Bob quit, Mick was touring studios and came across the Buckingham-Nicks album that inspired him to hire Lindsey, who agreed to join only if they also hired Stevie. Now you can see why Lindsey has been so upset with Stevie over the years, as she probably would’ve been nobody if not for him. There’s a milllion good-looking female singers who write songs — Stevie isn’t special in that regard, and is not a great singer. There are millions of good songs you’ve never heard simply because they weren’t promoted as well as hers. She’s not special other than she has an identifiable sound, but most singers do.

When Steve Miller was inducted, it wasn’t the Steve Miller Band, which is how he presented & marketed himself in concerts & on all his albums — it was just Steve himself who was inducted. The entire band was left out! I understand that he had a lot of different musicians who supported him in the studio & in concert, but there were 4 guys who were an integral part of the sound that spent a signifcant amount of time with him that were snubbed: Greg Douglass on guitar, Lonnie Turner on bass, Gary Mallaber on drums, and Bryan Allred on keyboards. Turner played bass on “The Joker”, “Fly Like An Eagle”, Rock’N Me” & “Take The Money & Run”; Mallaber played drums on the latter 3, and all 4 of them played on the Book Of Dreams album including the songs “Jet Airliner, Swingtown & Jungle Love — Douglass co-wrote Jungle Love including the famous opening riff. On the 1982 Abracadabra album, they all had multiple songwriting credits, with Mallaber co-writing 8 songs! They got nothing from the RRHOF.

The band members for Daryl Hall & John Oates also got the same treatment. This is another act that had a lot of sidemen & bandmembers, but there are a few who brought their A-game to the gig & contributed heavily to the hits. Charlie DeChant has been with them for 44 years including the hit making years from 1976 into the early 80s. G.E. Smith & Tom T-Bone Wolk (who joined the SNL band in the mid 80s during the band’s extended hiatus) played on all their Pop hits from 1979 onward, and T-Bone stayed with them until his death in 2010.

But wait — there’s more . . .

Bob Seger had a long-time band and was billed as Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band for 20 years during all his hitmaking years. Nobody in the band was inducted.

None of Prince’s backing bandmembers were inducted with him either. I get it that he played can play all the instruments & has at times, but he didn’t play all the instruments on all the hits or albums.

Steely Dan was an actual band for the first few albums, but none of those guys were inducted, not to mention the primary studio guys who made the albums what they were like Larry Carlton, Jeff Porcaro, Chuck Rainey or Michael McDonald.

Crosby Stills & Nash were inducted without Young, and when Neil Young was inducted as a solo artist, none of his band members were inducted with him even though they played with him for decades including during the hitmaking years.

The Allman Brothers were inducted without Chuck Leavell & Lamar Williams who were an integral part of the sound from 1972 to 1976.

None of Elton John’s bandmembers who were part of the 70s hits were inducted, specifically Nigel Olesson, Davey Johnstone or Dee Murray.

Same thing with Billy Joel bandmembers/sessionists Liberty DeVitto, Richie Cannata, Mark Rivera, Doug Stegmeyer, Russell Javors, David Brown & Steve Khan.

When the Beach Boys were inducted, they omitted Bruce Johnston who, with the exception of a 7-yr break, has been with the band since 1965 including the Pet Sounds album.

Recently I’ve seen articles promoting the idea that the reason why blacks have not progressed in society is because of systemic racism. Systemic racism exists to a degree, but of course, ending it is not the simple answer to the problem and probably zero chance of it happening in the next few generations without major positive efforts made by blacks within their own families to overcome it. The government allows a lot of discrimination & segregation to take place legally, but our society does as well.

Cultures everywhere segregate naturally & discriminate against outsiders in ways that are not necessarily bad. It’s perfectly natural for people to want to live among & socialize with only those of their same race, religion, sexuality, interests, etc, and that’s the way people all over the world have lived for centuries & still do. Go to any country anywhere & look for a melting pot — you won’t find it, except in America to some degree. That not an excuse to turn a blind eye to racism, but it explains a lot of our problems in trying to get whites & blacks together on some level, and although outlawing segregation & discrimination works, it won’t bring people together socially or societally at a deep level, as people identify & socialize with their own people regardless of government mandates, just as they do in the animal kingdom. Elephants & gazelles are not prey to each other, but they aren’t friends & don’t socialize.

Look at how many neighborhoods we have which are nearly 100% white, black, Italian, Hispanic, Asian, Arabic, Amish, Mormon, etc. Most of them are happy to be where they are unless they’re in a crime-riddled neighborhood, and no one is keeping them there. It’s been quite common for blacks & others to move to areas where they can live in peace away from the gunfire, drugs & despair.

What we’ve at least managed to do is make it unlawful to discriminate against people in many settings based on their race, gender, sexuality & religion, and that’s a good step to allow all members of our society to grow. But just because discrimination is decreed as unlawful doesn’t mean that people of different groups are going to suddenly start being tolerant or walking down the street holding hands with one another, much less socializing in diverse groups.

People are typically at their worst when they’re grouped together in some fashion, and also when they’re shunned from a group to which they want to belong. People individually are usually somewhat easy to deal with, but once they get into groups, they then want to elevate themselves above others who aren’t in the group to make themselves feel special. Many do so in order to get a leg up financially or socially by joining a country club, church, lodge or informal social group, and if you’ll notice, most of these groups are people of a single race, religion or background with little to no diversity, and they’re happy & usually not causing society any trouble in their socially-discriminatory ways. The law has recognized that private groups without Federal funding can discriminate legally with regard to religion, sex, race or social/political standing. If separation & discrimination is inherently bad in all forms, why does the government & our society allow it to flourish in this manner today?

Another way the government discriminates is against poor people by not providing governmental help to their communities. There are many poor communities that don’t have infrastructure as basic as public water & sewer.

You could look at it as a sign that the government wants people to lift themselves out of these impoverished communities by leaving them on their own to work it out. People are poor typically because of their own poor life choices, not because of bad luck or circumstances, Why help people who won’t try to help & better themselves? Every kid in America has access to the public school system & access to college & trade schools though student loans & grants, which will lead them out of poverty. Why aren’t the poor kids & their families availing themselves to these opportunities? Why help them if they choose not to?

Back to the thread — the only cure for black oppression is for blacks themselves to get a grip and start educating their own people & pushing advanced education to the forefront, as well as birth control & better parenting, which is really the crux of the problem. College graduates & people who are raised properly typically don’t kill people, deal drugs, or do any of the other various blue-collar crimes that make the black population as a whole a pariah to the whites. Very few blacks cause societal problems, but since a much larger percentage of them do vs whites, it’s a stereotypical problem for them all. It’s hard to believe that it’s been over 150 years since the Civil War ended and there’s still millions of blacks living in squalor and not lifting at least their offspring to a better place. Heck, go to West Virginia and look at the poor whites there who live the same way. Go to Mexico & you’ll see the same with Hispanics, and you’ll see cities which have the highest murder rates in the world. Go to Russia & you’ll see millions of white people subjugated & living a poor life under communism, just as you’ll see poor Chinese citizens in communist China. Ignorance knows no color or ethnic boundaries.